Before Watchmen

Last week, DC ComicsROCKED the comics world, and you didn't even notice. After previously ROCKING the comics world with their universe-wide reboot late last year, and then ROCKING it again with their new logo that pretty much everyone hates (but that I acknowledge the potential utility of), they announced that they would be doing a series of prequels to Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' 1986 comics masterpiece that most of you only care about because there was a movie with blue dong in it a couple of years back.

Naturally, this set off a fervor of arguments, with fanboys having a say, everyone else having a less informed say, and Alan Moore having his typical say, which is always about the same say, so what say we deal with that first?

Alan Moore predictably hates the idea, as he hates everything anyone does with his work, and disavows all movie adaptations and expansions. This includes League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (based upon previously existing characters that Moore simply spun up into something else), which was bleagh as anything other than straight action eye candy, to the previously mentioned Watchmen film, which people fought about, to From Hell and V for Vendetta, which are excellent. He doesn't care. To adapt Alan's work is to fuck it up in his mind, and he's quite vocal on the subject. So he's a dick. Hey - Van Gogh ate paint, Hopper & O'Keefe beat people up, and Pollock drank himself into a fatal car accident. David Foster Wallace and John Kennedy Toole killed themselves, just like Papa Hemingway. The 27 rule reigns over our musical talent. Many truly gifted people are a little insular, egotistical, or fucked up, and we deal, because they make good things we want. Moore's last big project was porn based on fairy tales. I would conclude my assessment of Moore's remarks by mentioning that ALL of the main characters in Watchmen are based on old Charlton Comics characters, Moore's explanation of which takes up about 20 pages at the end of my fancy 1989 hardback edition, so this is not a secret. Nor is the ending of The Outer Limits episode "The Architects of Fear," which actually gets mentioned in the original series. Moore denouncing folks for adapting his work might be a wee bit hypocritical. "There is nothing new under the sun," and as long as there are stories to tell, and told well, then maybe listening to them before denouncing them would be something to do, no?

Now - kicking DC all around the block for the money-grabbing aspect of this? Well, yeah: they're looking to make some money. A comics company doesn't hold licensed characters for the fun of playing with the licenses on weekends, and yes - as soon as the sales of the previous editions of the graphic novel and DVD and merchandise started to fall off from the last wave of Watchmen funtimes, they decided to make some more money. Luckily, they seem to be keeping two things in mind: Make shit, and people won't buy as much of it, and if you fuck this up, your credibility is shot all to hell. To wit, the talent they have chosen for this thing looks like a dream team of appropriate writers and artists (and if Moore had a brain in his fucking head, he'd point out to everyone that it takes four guys writing 35 comics just to get to where he started his story) and I, for one am looking forward to it. Selling stuff doesn't necessarily equate to selling out.

One danger is that they will fuck this up in one of two ways we've seen recently. The first possible for this is the Starfire route, where you take a previously established and well-loved character (whose most well-known incarnation is from a children's cartoon) and re-interpret her in a way that changes her whole personality, thus messing up the character for everyone (except, in this case, horny straight teenage boys) and pissing people off. This is less likely in my mind than the Wolverine:Origin mistake where you mess up the appeal of a character we don't know everything about by telling us everything about them. TMI in the worst way ruins the mystery of a character, and while we already have a raft of backstory about all of the main folks in Watchmen, I still have fear. But it's a small fear.

There is no way that the prequels can measure up to the original, and I think everyone knows that, and there's a very simple reason why. The thing that makes Watchmen great (and what is missing from even the movie) is not the great characters or non-linear storytelling, or even the multi-layered world. Though those things are all amazing, but it's not as if they've never been matched. The thing that's really unique about Watchmen is the same thing that's unique about Unforgiven or Rhinoceros - it's a deconstructionist work about the genre in which it exists, you don't have to know that to enjoy it and it still manages to be entertaining, whether or not you bring that level of analysis to it. Only if the prequels deconstruct the comics industry, superheroes and the nature of prequels, could they come close to the level of the original work.

I'm going to read them anyway, and choose to reserve judgment until then.

Comments

Before Watchmen

Last week, DC ComicsROCKED the comics world, and you didn't even notice. After previously ROCKING the comics world with their universe-wide reboot late last year, and then ROCKING it again with their new logo that pretty much everyone hates (but that I acknowledge the potential utility of), they announced that they would be doing a series of prequels to Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' 1986 comics masterpiece that most of you only care about because there was a movie with blue dong in it a couple of years back.

Naturally, this set off a fervor of arguments, with fanboys having a say, everyone else having a less informed say, and Alan Moore having his typical say, which is always about the same say, so what say we deal with that first?

Alan Moore predictably hates the idea, as he hates everything anyone does with his work, and disavows all movie adaptations and expansions. This includes League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (based upon previously existing characters that Moore simply spun up into something else), which was bleagh as anything other than straight action eye candy, to the previously mentioned Watchmen film, which people fought about, to From Hell and V for Vendetta, which are excellent. He doesn't care. To adapt Alan's work is to fuck it up in his mind, and he's quite vocal on the subject. So he's a dick. Hey - Van Gogh ate paint, Hopper & O'Keefe beat people up, and Pollock drank himself into a fatal car accident. David Foster Wallace and John Kennedy Toole killed themselves, just like Papa Hemingway. The 27 rule reigns over our musical talent. Many truly gifted people are a little insular, egotistical, or fucked up, and we deal, because they make good things we want. Moore's last big project was porn based on fairy tales. I would conclude my assessment of Moore's remarks by mentioning that ALL of the main characters in Watchmen are based on old Charlton Comics characters, Moore's explanation of which takes up about 20 pages at the end of my fancy 1989 hardback edition, so this is not a secret. Nor is the ending of The Outer Limits episode "The Architects of Fear," which actually gets mentioned in the original series. Moore denouncing folks for adapting his work might be a wee bit hypocritical. "There is nothing new under the sun," and as long as there are stories to tell, and told well, then maybe listening to them before denouncing them would be something to do, no?

Now - kicking DC all around the block for the money-grabbing aspect of this? Well, yeah: they're looking to make some money. A comics company doesn't hold licensed characters for the fun of playing with the licenses on weekends, and yes - as soon as the sales of the previous editions of the graphic novel and DVD and merchandise started to fall off from the last wave of Watchmen funtimes, they decided to make some more money. Luckily, they seem to be keeping two things in mind: Make shit, and people won't buy as much of it, and if you fuck this up, your credibility is shot all to hell. To wit, the talent they have chosen for this thing looks like a dream team of appropriate writers and artists (and if Moore had a brain in his fucking head, he'd point out to everyone that it takes four guys writing 35 comics just to get to where he started his story) and I, for one am looking forward to it. Selling stuff doesn't necessarily equate to selling out.

One danger is that they will fuck this up in one of two ways we've seen recently. The first possible for this is the Starfire route, where you take a previously established and well-loved character (whose most well-known incarnation is from a children's cartoon) and re-interpret her in a way that changes her whole personality, thus messing up the character for everyone (except, in this case, horny straight teenage boys) and pissing people off. This is less likely in my mind than the Wolverine:Origin mistake where you mess up the appeal of a character we don't know everything about by telling us everything about them. TMI in the worst way ruins the mystery of a character, and while we already have a raft of backstory about all of the main folks in Watchmen, I still have fear. But it's a small fear.

There is no way that the prequels can measure up to the original, and I think everyone knows that, and there's a very simple reason why. The thing that makes Watchmen great (and what is missing from even the movie) is not the great characters or non-linear storytelling, or even the multi-layered world. Though those things are all amazing, but it's not as if they've never been matched. The thing that's really unique about Watchmen is the same thing that's unique about Unforgiven or Rhinoceros - it's a deconstructionist work about the genre in which it exists, you don't have to know that to enjoy it and it still manages to be entertaining, whether or not you bring that level of analysis to it. Only if the prequels deconstruct the comics industry, superheroes and the nature of prequels, could they come close to the level of the original work.

I'm going to read them anyway, and choose to reserve judgment until then.